


Work in Progress

by eggs_and_toast



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Art School, Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, art school au, giant character mishmash, i think there's plot, marco still dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1402363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggs_and_toast/pseuds/eggs_and_toast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is the definition of art? What makes an artist, an artist? Eren doesn't know, doesn't care. He just wants to learn how to draw a person without it looking like some bizarre monster from a bad thriller movie and pass art history with at least a C.</p><p>Basically, art school shenanigans in a liberal arts state university that may or may not be in danger of being taken over by a certain man with imposing eyebrows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Caravaggio

**Author's Note:**

> At time of writing I have no idea how far this will go. But for now, warnings for character death later on, ratings for graphic and potentially traumatic (for the characters at least) depictions of life drawing models, and it wouldn't be art school without someone drawing a penis on something.

The clay sat on the table, a thin cloud of dust from the impact of its landing still hanging in the air.

“You want me to do what?” Eren asked, doubt written across his sweaty face.

“Wedge the clay,” repeated Hannes. He crossed his arms over his chest, the lines in his face forming a patient expression as Eren took hold of the clay with hesitant hands. The art teacher cringed when he saw the kid’s bruised knuckles, but he was thankful Eren had chosen to pummel the wall instead of the boys that were heckling him after school ended.

“What’s wedging?” came the expected question.

“I won’t get into the science of it, but you’re basically trying to remove air from the clay so that it doesn’t break in the kiln,” Hannes replied.

“What does clay have to-“

“Wedge the clay like this.” Hannes interrupted him and took the clay. He first slammed it down again, then attacked it with his hands. Eren watched the teacher manipulate the clay with force that he didn’t know the soft-looking middle-aged man had.

“Back in my student days, I once worked for an artist that made me prep his clay for him,” Hannes continued. He gave the clay one final work-over and then leaned back to let Eren take over. “At first, it was tedious and I hated it. But after a few hundred wedges, it became relaxing.”

Eren touched the clay again and tried to force it down and out like Hannes did. Hannes tapped the teen’s hands into a better spot, then answered Eren’s earlier question in a low voice that was absent of anger or reprimand.

“You’re still angry at those boys, right?”

Eren tensed, fingers digging into the clay. He decided he liked the feel of it, how it got into his fingernails and got warm from the beating Hannes gave it.

“Yeah,” he muttered, feeling the familiar touch of anger seep into him. “They brought Mikasa into it this time.”

Hannes grunted in displeasure. While it had only been a couple of months since he last had dinner with Eren’s family, he still struggled to look past the little girl Mikasa used to be to see the lovely woman she was now. The term “adopted sister” apparently didn’t mean much to teenage boys. They should just be fortunate that the girl had volleyball practice at the time.

“Then wedge the clay,” Hannes said, and then crossed the small, dusty room the high school called a ceramics studio to sit behind his desk. “I’ll be over here, grading stuff or something. When you think you’re done, make whatever you want with it.”

Eren looked up at a clock on the wall; it was nearly three-thirty, and school had let out an hour ago.

“Don’t you like…need to go home, or somethin’?” he asked, pushing the clay with more force this time.

“Nah,” Hannes said, brushing him off. “It’s Friday, the bar will be open all night.”

Eren pounded the clay with vigor, but a small smile flitted across his face.

\---

Monday afternoon had Eren sitting in the ceramics studio, waiting for Hannes to show up. The teacher had told him that he would fire his sculpture in the morning, and to meet him after school to see how it came out.

 _‘Wonder why I never took his class,’_ Eren thought, looking at some student work sitting on a shelf. His high school required at least two art classes during the four years, but despite Hannes being an old family friend, he still wound up in art classes taught by someone else.

 _‘I don’t remember,’_ he mused, idly swinging his legs off the stool. ‘ _I think I did mine in freshman year, which was right after Mom died.’_

He shut his eyes against the dull pain that arose, then opened them when he heard Hannes enter the classroom.

“Sorry it took so long!” The man apologized, looking sheepish. “Apparently old Bigsby saw me leaving the bar the other night and put up a fuss.”

“But what was a straight and proper physics teacher doing outside a bar?” Eren snickered.

“ _Exactly_ what I said!” Hannes agreed, clapping his hands. “Anyway, I fired your piece. And it didn’t break! Which actually isn’t too surprising, I don’t think there was a single speck of air left after you were done wedging it.”

Eren was at first disappointed with the small sculpture, but later he would learn that the reason it wasn’t shiny like the student work he saw earlier was because it wasn’t glazed. The sculpture was a man twisting with his arms raised up in the air. It was a bit crude from lack of skill and the anatomy wasn’t perfect, but the forms were all there. At first it looked like the man was raising his arms in joy, but the hands were shaped as round balls for fists and the twisted pose didn’t suggest joy. The head was also just a ball, so the face gave no clues.

Eren flushed when Hannes mentioned the duality of the piece. “It’s a victory pose,” he explained. “He just won a fight. But it was a fight he didn’t want to fight, so that’s why he’s twisted in pain.”

Hannes accepted the explanation with a low hum and inspected the sculpture again.

 _‘Not bad,’_ he thought. _‘Considering this is his first time, naturally the craftsmanship is weak, but the concept is really good, better than I would expect for an on-the-spot piece from a kid who has never really touched clay.’_

Eren waited nervously, but didn’t know why he was so anxious about Hanne’s opinion. _‘It’s just dried clay,’_ he thought, biting a knuckle on his hand without realizing it. ‘ _Obviously it sucks, I’ve never done this before, but…’_

Hannes turned suddenly and wrapped Eren into an energetic hug.

“You did good, Eren!” he said, leaning back and clapping the teen on his shoulders. For a man getting soft around the edges from age and booze, Eren was surprised to again glimpse physical strength in his teacher. “Hey, wanna put this on display in the library? They’re showing off student work, and they’re giving out a few prizes.”

Eren, still recovering from the display of affection and the thought that maybe he didn’t know Hannes as well as he assumed he did, nodded yes.

\---

 _Victory Pose_ didn’t win a placement prize, but it did win an honorable mention award (ten dollars). In his last semester as a senior, Eren and Hannes convinced the school to let him take ceramics despite his poor track record with the counselors and teachers. Eren’s craftsmanship improved a little, and while it was still obvious he lacked a lot of other basic art skills and know-how, he did come to one conclusion.

Be it through fire and ice, he was going to become an artist.

\---

_Caravaggio’s works have a strong use of tenebrism, which was a method of creating dramatic lighting. The backgrounds are heavy, dark, and sometimes just black, while the middle and foreground elements are brightly lit. It’s almost as if the paintings’ subjects are glowing—a light in the darkness._


	2. Caspar David Friedrich

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Butts go numb, mysterious words are spoken, and Eren is out of his comfort zone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long!! It didn't come out very easily [insert Levi's thumbs up of approval here] so I got it edited first. It still isn't as quality as it should be, but I don't want to get bogged down on chapter one of all things so here it goes.

The University of Rose-Trost was the smallest campus in the University of Rose college system, and while it wasn’t a small city, Trost itself was also a fairly average-sized city compared to the big cities in the Midwestern territory. It started out as a manufacturing town, but never quite hit the buttons it needed to become as large as Chicago or Even Milwaukee. As Trost’s city officials began to take notice of the lack in their city, they began to look for ways to help inject new life into it. They began, of course, with business, and UR-Trost’s burgeoning business school was the perfect tool.

Or at least, that’s what Eren thought he remembered hearing the hunched old man say during his speech.

He rubbed the drowsiness out of his eyes and yawned. The gym was hot, his butt was numb from sitting on a wooden slab for two hours, and he was surrounded on all sides by three hundred other sweaty freshmen. The welcoming ceremony for UR-Trost freshmen had promised to be long and boring, and so far, it was making good on the promise. The old man paused, but then launched into another raspy ramble.

“I’m having horrible flashbacks of high school assemblies,” Eren groaned. “I thought college was supposed to be better than high school.”

To his right, Armin chuckled, a low and dark sound as he remembered awful high school assemblies. Eren’s childhood friend, Armin Arlert was a slim, blonde and blue-eyed teen. He finally looked like he was maturing, but Eren still remembered a time when Armin was a scrawny little kid with an ugly bowl cut, which Armin had finally put an end to when he reached high school. The short, neat hairstyle was Armin’s first triumph over his old-fashioned—and occasionally strict—grandfather.

“It could be worse,” Mikasa said from Eren’s left. “I see a lack of banshees in cheerleader uniforms.”

“This is true,” Armin agreed. “I heard that Clarissa went to UR-Jinae, by the way. We’re safe from her nails-on-chalkboard screeching.”

Mikasa and Eren sighed in relief at the same time as if they were twins, which would have been believable if it weren’t for Mikasa’s Asian features compared to Eren’s Caucasian features.  Armin smiled at their sibling bond; he could remember a time when Mikasa rarely spoke, and was a dark specter lingering behind Eren back when they were kids.Down on the gym floor, the old man finally maneuvered himself back to his seat next to other UR-T administrators. Armin’s head dropped in defeat as a woman introduced the next speaker.

“C’mon guys, we can do this!” Eren exclaimed, leaning forward in mock determination to make it through another long and boring speech. “I think this is the last one!”

“First, I would like to thank all of you for patiently sitting through our somewhat verbose speeches,” the speaker began. He was aging as well, but much better than the hunched, withered speaker from a moment ago. He still had a head full of gray hair with a beard to match, and while his gut was rounded, he had a solid, broad form and his shirt sleeves were rolled up against the stuffy heat above strong arms.

“I am Darius Zackly, dean of the school of humanities and arts within UR-Trost. I know that most of you are here for our business or sciences school, but allow me to say a quick piece about my own.”

He leaned forward on the podium, a hand on either side of the microphone. The pause in his speaking and the gesture made Eren straight up a little with interest.

“Art is a fickle thing,” the dean said, eyes serious behind his glasses. “Those who think it an easy subject are either fools or gods amongst men. It is subjective, competitive, will embrace you like a lover and then stab you in the back soon after. Writing, performing, singing—they are all the same in nature. If you aren’t careful, you’ll be trampled and left by the wayside, as trash beneath the feet of gods.

“Now that I’ve brought gloom upon you all,” Zackly cleared his throat. “A certain man has put me up to saying a promo about UR-T’s art club. The president, Erwin Smith, would like to welcome any interested students to meetings at one on Fridays in the painting studio. Back to Dr. Lutzow.”

Zackly abruptly returned to his seat, a hesitant applause from the students following him.

“Well,” Armin muttered, as the closing speech was given. “That was, uh, interesting, if not short.”

“Doesn’t seem like his peers appreciated it,” Mikasa pointed out. Sure enough, a woman was whispering heated words to Zackly, who appeared to shrug her off with little concern.

“I thought it was cool!” Eren said, voice nearly drowned out as the students clamored around on the bleachers to leave the gym.

“That’s because you’re an art major hopeful,” Armin said, shaking his head.

Outside of the gym, the trio stood in line for their school I.D. cards. Photos and forms were filled out before the welcoming ceremony, which was mandatory to all freshmen. Despite being adopted, Mikasa retained her original surname of Ackerman instead of Eren’s, which was Jaeger. The lines for I.D.s were separated by alphabet, so Eren found himself standing by the gym to wait for Armin and Mikasa.

“What did you do to him? The provost looked like she wanted to claw his eyes out.”

Eren’s ears picked up a low voice within the drone of the crowd’s chatter. A tall, blonde man was nearby. He was at least six feet tall and was ridiculously handsome in a way that made Eren wish he wore something more attractive than his old AC/DC shirt. The man was with a much shorter man who was quite opposite in appearance. He had a black undercut, pale skin, and bags under his eyes that made Eren wonder if the man ever slept. He also wore all black and an old leather jacket, which was quite a feat considering it was early September and still warm out. Eren was trying to figure out if this made the man look cool or just weird when the taller one spoke.

“Just an old-fashioned bribe,” he said, with a light chuckle. “I know many things about many people.”

The shorter man narrowed his eyes.”You couldn’t bribe him to let me get my crap in the mail? I could sit on a bed of nails, my butt’s so numb. Wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“And miss out on such an engaging ceremony?”

“I’m gonna shove this cigarette up your left nostril.”

The two men walked away, leaving Eren very confused. Neither man looked like freshmen, and what was this about bribes? Armin and Mikasa joined him, interrupting his thoughts.

“Where to, Eren?” Mikasa asked. “We have the choice of joining the campus tour, one of the freshmen activities, or going to our dorms.”

“Huh? Oh, I think I’ll just go back to the dorm,” Eren replied. “I still haven’t unpacked everything yet, and my roommate finally showed up this morning.”

“He should be lucky they didn’t give his room away,” Armin said. “They made it sound pretty clear that we had to be here on move-in day or else.”

Eren shrugged. “I just hope he’s an alright guy. It’s gonna be weird, sharing a room with a stranger for a couple of years.”

They fell silent, thinking about their new living environment. All three were living in the dorms as they were from the city of Maria, which was about a hour’s drive away, but roommates were chosen at random and so while they were together at the same school, they were still separate, and in an unfamiliar environment. For Armin, it was a breath of freedom, but Eren and Mikasa were fish out of water.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Eren,” Armin said, trying to ease Eren’s nerves. “So long as you don’t open your mouth, anyway.”

“Hey!”

 

\---

 

As dorm residents, Eren and his friends had moved in the day before, and explored the campus afterward. UR-Trost was made up of three main buildings, one for the school of arts and humanities, sciences and social sciences, and business. There were also five secondary buildings: two for academics, one for sports and the gyms, and a student center. Eren wasn’t sure what was in the fifth building, probably boilers or something for utilities.

The dorms were spread across two buildings and consisted of quads, which were made up of four rooms, a shared bathroom, and a kitchenette that was really just a small fridge and microwave. The campus was sandwiched between two industrial parks, leaving dining options within ten minutes of campus down to just on-campus dining, and already the price of a single banana was enough to make Eren stick to bagged lunches.

‘ _I have a meal plan, but I need to be frugal_ ,’ Eren thought, walking into his quad. ‘ _But I can’t spend too little, either, what you don’t spend doesn’t roll over into the next semester. College is so dumb, why is a banana a dollar when I can get one for a quarter at the grocery store?_ ’

One of the juniors—Steve? Stephen?—was sitting on the beat-up loveseat that sat in the center of their tiny living area, and he nodded at Eren before looking back down as his textbook. Each quad tried to consist of a range of the four academic years, and Eren’s managed to have an even split with two of each. Armin’s had five freshmen, a sophomore, and two juniors, while Mikasa’s had four sophomores, a junior, and a senior.

The door to Eren’s room was open, and he approached it slowly.

‘ _I might be stuck with this guy for four years_ ,’ he thought, feeling nervous again. ‘ _What if I get stuck with some douchebag? They said it takes forever to get room changes approved, and I can’t get into fights anymore. In high school, you’re suspended. In college, you’re arrested._ ’

He took a step into the room, and was immediately greeted by a large pair of breasts.

Well, cartoon breasts, and with enough coverage to keep Eren from turning beet red. The owner was an anime girl on a poster, dressed in sexy, skimpy armor and wielding a sword too big for reality.

“Whoa! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Eren jumped; he missed the guy crouched in front of a dresser, a box on either side. He sported a tan, a buzz cut, and a wide, friendly grin. After he leapt to his feet, Eren saw that his roommate was slightly shorter than his own decent height of five foot ten.

“Hi, I’m Connie Springer!” he said, holding out his hand.

“Eren Jaeger.” Eren shook Connie’s hand; he had an energetic grip to match his friendly demeanor.

“Sorry I’m a day late,” Connie said, though he didn’t look apologetic. “My car broke down when we were only a hour into the trip up here, and it took what felt like an entire court case’s worth of evidence to get them to hold my room for me.”

“Really? That’s good though, I heard it’s hard to keep them from doing that,” Eren said, sitting on his bed. The room was split evenly with two dressers, two twin beds, and a closet. Eren’s wall held the only window, but he didn’t own any posters so he had chosen it specifically. He could see now it was a good move; half of Connie’s wall was already covered in various posters or small prints.

“Yeah, it was awful,” Connie said, sitting back down. “I’m just glad the mechanics gave me a discount after hearing me plead with the dorm people. Hey! So what’s your major?”

“Uh, art,” Eren said, thrown off by Connie’s change of topic.

“DUDE, same here!” Connie practically shouted. He held out his fist and got a shy bump in return. “Animation major! This is going to be awesome, I thought I was gonna get stuck with some stuck-up doctor major!”

“Same,” Eren laughed. “That or a business major.”

“Oh, right, UR-T is more known for their business program, not so much for pre-health.” Connie resumed unpacking, putting brightly colored and weirdly patterned boxers into a drawer. “I picked here ‘cuz it’s the only school with an animation program that wasn’t an art school or out of state.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t afford art school either,” Eren sighed. ‘ _Mikasa wanted to go to the same school as me. Dad can’t afford to send both of us to an art school, so we just picked UR-T._ ’

“Hey! It’s ok though!” Connie turned back around and pointed at Eren. “These days, it’s not about where you went, but what you do and who you know! We can do this, I know it!”

Eren grinned, taken in by his enthusiasm and earnest determination. He decided he liked Connie, and that maybe he would be just fine after all.

 

\---

 

_Caspar David Friedrich is the painter of The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, in which a man stands above a foggy landscape. The rock elements in the background, and even in the foreground, are composited from studies that Friedrich did at actual locations. Alone, each element is recognizable as their original form, but in this painting, they form a new whole. The painting is an excellent example of gestalt theory._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might have noticed the extra bit there at the end. There is a similar tidbit added to chapter 0.

**Author's Note:**

> And there we have it. I think there's going to be plot but for now I'm just going to steamroll ahead before I lose the nerve to write this. So it may come across as mini-stories at first? We'll see.
> 
> Also, this chapter wasn't beta'd so if there are any errors, let me know.


End file.
